Scandals like the recently released Panama Papers show the enormous lengths people, from government officials, big businesses, celebrities and the wealthy elite, will go to avoid paying tax.

The whole world has been talking about the leaked documents and those named for tax dodging – often through perfectly legal loopholes that deny poor countries of billions needed for essential services like health and education.

But there are also people going to extraordinary lengths to tackle the inequality that keeps people poor and to make tax fair for everyone.

People like Ene Agbo from Nigeria, Cecillia Mulenga from Zambia, Gertrude Chirwa from Malawi and Stella Agara from Kenya but working in Malawi – four inspiring women who are taking on the tax dodgers and who we are delighted to be hosting in Ireland this weekend.

The four activists are currently travelling around Europe meeting with the public, decision-makers and Oxfam supporters to share first-hand how tax dodging is harming people and communities.

You are invited to join us in Dublin and Belfast to hear for yourself why tackling the global toxic tax system matters and to catch their contagious energy and passion for the fight against tax dodging.

Cecillia told us: “You should be around in Zambia when we are doing campaigning – it’s one of the best days…!”

She has a very personal reason for getting angry about public funds lost to tax dodging. A good friend of hers died when she was eight months pregnant because there were no health facilities.

Cecillia says: “If those corporations were paying their dues my friend would not have died. They would have built a hospital; they would have built a better road in that same area. That would have helped her and kept her alive.”

Meet Cecillia

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Stella said the lengths some firms go to avoid paying tax in Malawi is mind-blowing: “It is the order of the day for small business to pay more tax than multinational companies, yet multinational companies are making billions out of Malawi,” she says.

Stella believes that this corporate tax dodging is driving inequality in Malawi: “For me I have seen people enjoy very wealthy lives…and I have seen people who are very poor, who don’t ever put on shoes – that is when you have seen poverty.”

Meet Stella

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Gertrude is 22 years old and raises awareness about tax injustice in the community, particularly with young people. She believes it’s down to ordinary citizens to do something about tax dodging.

Gertrude says: “When I learnt about it, I got really angry and motivated at the same time…I need to do something about it, I need to make others also aware there are a lot of tax injustices happening in our country and that we can do something, particularly the youth.

“What I say to the campaigners in the rest of the world is: let’s keep up the good work, let’s keep fighting for tax justice – if we don’t do it, then who will?”

Meet Gertrude

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While the headlines and the hype can make tax dodging seem complex, it is refreshing to hear from real people with real passion about what is happening on the ground – and to realise we are all connected in a global push to take on the tax dodgers and make change for good.

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LIVE STREAM:

If you can't make the events in Dublin or Belfast, we will be doing our first ever social media live stream talk and Q&A with these activists, on Facebook and Periscope, this Saturday (April 16) at 4pm. Keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter for more info and to join our chat on Saturday.

Last month over 80 activists from Europe and across the world came together for a two day conference in the Netherlands with one shared goal: to change the way tax works.

Lynsey Burrows from Northern Ireland travelled to Amsterdam along with fellow volunteer campaigner Grace De Bláca and Oxfam Ireland's Campaigns and Public Outreach Executive Mary Quinn. They joined the group working to tackle issues like tax dodging which robs countries of vital funds needed for essential services like health and education.

Lynsey shares her thoughts on the difficulty of communicating such an important but complex issue:

In March, I was extremely excited to be able to attend the Tax Justice Together conference in Amsterdam with Oxfam Ireland. The tax justice movement is one of the largest social justice movements of the past few years and it is gaining momentum all the time. The conference was an opportunity for activists from all around the world to meet and discuss how best we can continue to work together to campaign for change to the global tax system.

Within hours of arriving at the conference it became clear that there was one common problem we all faced when campaigning on tax justice in our communities: tax justice sounds boring. Unless you work in the financial industry or are a ‘tax justice nerd’ (the sort who is extremely excited to attend tax justice conferences...) anything to do with tax sounds dreary, dull and complicated.

And it can be all of those things. Phrases like ‘tax treaties’, ‘capital gains’ and ‘bilateral investments’ are not the most easy to relate to when trying to talk to people about why tax matters. But there was also a very clear and urgent issue that any Oxfam supporter can relate to:

Tax injustice sustains poverty – as long as there is an unfair tax system, there will be poverty.

Without any jargon or financial knowledge needed, we can all understand that anything that maintains poverty or makes it worse is something we need to fight against.

Developing countries are losing billions every year because of tax injustice. Tax injustice has many aspects to it and I am going to focus on just one of those. One of the main culprits is multinational companies avoiding paying tax – tax dodging. They do this through schemes such as tax treaties. Put very simply (because I don’t want to bore you but mainly because I’m not an expert either) tax treaties are an agreement between two countries to avoid paying double tax.

So, if one multinational company (let’s call them WeLoveMoney) is registered in two countries that have a tax treaty, they will only have to pay tax in one of those counties. WeLoveMoney operates and makes an awful lot of money (which they love, hence the name) in one of those countries, the country that is developed and wealthy. But they are also registered in the developing country, where they don’t make much money but source or create their product. Can you guess which country they choose to pay their taxes in?

So because of perfectly legal loopholes, WeLoveMoney pays a very small amount of tax in the developing country where it is also generating profit and that country's government does not get its fair share of tax - money that is needed to help pay for healthcare, education and essential public services. Without the money they’re rightfully owed, poverty continues.

The rights and welfare of the some of the poorest people in the world are being harmed by the current global tax system. So if you hear me and other activists talking about tax, we’re really talking about poverty, about injustice and about inequality.

And that’s not boring.

#MakeTaxFair

We've got four very special guests coming to Ireland next week - tax campaigners from Malawi, Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia. These activists work tirelessly to change the policies and structures that allow rich individuals and multinational companies to avoid paying the tax they owe. You can meet them in person in Dublin and Belfast (details below).- Dublin (April 16): http://bit.ly/1USs2Me- Belfast (April 19): http://bit.ly/23u29DX

#MakeTaxFair tour with Tax Justice Together: We've got four very special guests coming to Ireland this April - tax campaigners from Malawi, Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia. These activists work tirelessly to change the policies and structures that allow rich individuals and multinational companies to avoid paying the tax they owe. You can meet them in person in Dublin (April 16) and Belfast(April 19).

Why tax matters?

The impact of an unfair tax system should not be measured in numbers and facts – but in its shocking human impact.

When countries don't receive the money they are owed in tax, people suffer. Children can't go to school, parents work hard but it doesn't pay so their families still go to bed hungry at night, communities living in poverty don't have a say in the decisions that affect them. Inequality grows and poverty is made worse.

Clockwise from left: 1. Munni stands beside an open drain in Horijon Polli, the slum where she lives with her family. 2. Munni at work – despite working hard every day, Munni dreams of work that really pays. 3. Munni cooks breakfast with her two-year old son. Photos: Adrian Lloyd/Oxfam

Munni Basfur lives with her husband and four children in one room in Horijon Polli, a densely-populated slum in Bangladesh that is home to approximately 6,000 people. Oxfam is working with partners there to improve public health facilities, rebuilding toilets and sanitation systems as well as building new bathing blocks.

For people like Munni, the effects of inequality are felt on a daily basis. Munni works incredibly hard every day to make ends meet – as a cleaner in a company and then again in a local government office.

And yet still she dreams of job security: “I call my job a “one/two job”. One: today I have it. Two: tomorrow I don’t.”

The only two certainties we have are death and taxes, so the saying goes.

The Panama Papers released this week by the ICIJ show the enormous lengths people will go to in order to evade or avoid paying taxes. But they don’t show the serious impact of such actions — which can literally mean death for some.

A story which emerged from Cameroon last month illustrates this in the most tragic way. Monique Koumate (31) was expecting twins. Her partner took her to hospital when she went into labour and started experiencing complications. But because they didn’t have the money to pay the fees required, she was reportedly left outside the maternity unit in the city of Douala for hours, in desperate need of urgent care, the door closed to her.

Monique’s family did their best to help her — a graphic video shows a woman reported to be her niece trying to perform a caesarean section using a knife — but one twin was stillborn and the other died moments after birth. Monique also died on the steps of the maternity unit — three lives lost feet away from the medical attention they needed but could not afford.

Cameroon has a severe shortage of doctors, just one for every 5,000 people. The government introduced a fee-based system for healthcare in a bid to bridge a funding gap and make services more widely available.

Illicit financial flows out of Cameroon are 63% of the country’s health budget and the equivalent of its entire foreign direct investment and aid each year.

The day after the video of Monique Koumate's death was published, several hundred people gathered in front of the hospital where she died to protest at Cameroon’s failing healthcare system. Source: Vert Rougue Jaune/Facebook

Every single year, poor countries lose around €150bn/£119bn due to tax dodging by wealthy individuals and companies. This is money that should be used to fund schools, hospitals, homes and infrastructure.

INEQUALITY IS OUT OF CONTROL

It’s part of the bigger and growing problem of economic inequality. An Oxfam report published in January showed that just 62 people own as much net wealth as the poorer half the world’s population — approximately €1.62tn/£1.25tn.

Think about that for a moment: the number of people who could probably comfortably fit inside your local pub, own as much as 3.6bn people do.

Our economic system is skewed in favour of the wealthiest. Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being sucked upwards at an alarming rate.

One of the trends underlying this concentration of wealth and income is the return to capital versus labour. In almost all rich countries and in most developing countries, the share of national income going to workers has been falling. This means workers are capturing less and less of the gains from growth.

In contrast, the owners of capital have seen it consistently grow (through interest payments, dividends, or retained profits) faster than the rate the economy has been growing.

Tax avoidance by the owners of capital, and governments reducing taxes on capital gains, have further added to these returns.

Thanks to the recent revelations and previous investigations such as Lux Leaks, public awareness — and frustration — has increased dramatically. Ahead of the Irish general election in March, an Oxfam Ireland survey conducted nationwide found that 82% of people agreed that measures to specifically address tax-dodging needed to be a priority for the incoming government and Taoiseach.

The survey also showed growing concern in relation to large-scale tax dodging with 86% of Irish people holding the belief that big companies and wealthy individuals are using tax loopholes to dodge paying their fair share.

All governments, rich and poor, have to work together to tackle the inequality so clearly illustrated by the Panama Papers because it is their citizens who are the biggest losers. They need to fix the system and penalise banks and any others who facilitate tax-dodging.

Real transparency is needed — establishing public registers of the beneficial owners of all companies, foundations and trusts (so governments know who really owns and benefits from them and can tax them accordingly).

We also need to know where companies really make their profits and where they are paying their taxes. This would allow countries to fairly tax multinationals where their profits are. To achieve this, a simple solution is on the table.

Country-by-country reporting, as it is called in tax jargon, would require multinational companies to publish this information. Some countries, including Ireland, say they’ll implement it, but the information won’t be made public.

This is a crucial flaw — because if the information remains confidential between tax authorities, the public and civil society won’t be able to hold multinationals to account for their tax practices — and developing countries won’t be able to scrutinise the global tax arrangements of multinationals in their territory.

As political leaders in Ireland continue to engage in discussions on government formation, the measures Ireland can take to assist in the reform of the global tax system should be part of the agreement of any progressive Programme for Government. The human cost of doing anything else is simply too high.

Imagine sharing your home with a housemate who raids your section of the fridge, frequently ‘borrows’ your things without telling you and doesn’t make any effort to clean or maintain the shared living space. A housemate who can well afford to pay their way – but doesn’t contribute their fair share towards the bills.

That’s how putting up with tax dodgers feels. It leaves the vast majority of people, i.e. ordinary tax-payers, making up the shortfall left by those who can most afford to pay it but don’t. Tax dodging also hurts the most vulnerable in society who can’t access quality public services as a result.

As details emerge from the Panama Papers exposé by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a spotlight has been shone on tax dodging by wealthy individuals the world over.

It’s the latest major investigation into tax dodging by the worldwide organisation of reporters following LuxLeaks in 2014 and Swissleaks last year.

Panama Papers is a rare glimpse into a toxic global tax system where wealthy individuals, who in a progressive tax system should be paying the most in tax, have the biggest incentives to exploit this weak architecture to avoid paying their fair share.

Their names are in the news. But the names of those most harmed by tax dodging are not. As long as tax dodging continues to drain government coffers the world over, there is a human cost with less to spend on vital public services and the resources needed to tackle poverty, put children in school and prevent citizens dying from lack of healthcare.

Every single year, poor countries lose approx. €150 billion/£119 billion due to tax dodging by wealthy individuals and companies.

Outside a hospital in Malawi, parents and their babies sit on the ground in the long queues.

Public health facilities in Malawi are free at the point of use, meaning they are not as regressive as is the case in many countries in Africa where fees are charged (making them out of reach for the poorest). But persistent shortages of medicines and staff mean that these facilities often provide a very poor quality service, despite the best efforts of their few heroic health workers.

“As a nurse, I love my job and I love helping people,” says Vitumbiko Mhango who works at the Kamuzu Central Hospital and Bwaila maternity clinic.

Inequality in Malawi

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“A shortage of staff is really impacting on our delivery of services. Patients have to wait very long for many hours just to be attended to. It makes me feel sad because as a nurse I feel I’m failing my job.”

Malawi has experienced rapid economic growth in recent years, but the gains of this growth have not been spread evenly and the gap between rich and poor has widened at an alarming pace. Today, half of all Malawians live in poverty.

We have calculated that the lost tax revenue from the money revealed to be held by Malawians in HSBC accounts in Geneva – as revealed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in their SwissLeaks exposé in 2015 – could pay the salaries of 800 nurses for one year.

When taxes go unpaid due to widespread avoidance by wealthy individuals and companies, government budgets feel the pinch – the coffers are drained when it comes to investing in healthcare, schools and infrastructure. But universal and affordable public services are vital to lifting people out of poverty and it is the poorest, unable to afford ‘to go private’ who suffer the most when they are not provided by the state.

There is no getting away from the fact that the big winners in our global economy are those at the top and the gap between them and the rest of society is widening. Earlier this year, our research showed that just 62 billionaires own the same wealth as the poorest half of the population – so few they would fit onto a coach from Belfast to Dublin.

This elite group has become more exclusive over the years – falling from 80 members last year and 388 as recently as 2010. Our economic system is heavily skewed in the favour of the wealthiest, and arguably increasingly so. Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being sucked upwards at an alarming rate. Once there, ever more elaborate tax dodging and an industry of wealth managers ensure that it stays there, far from the reach of ordinary citizens and their governments.

All governments, rich and poor, must work to end tax dodging because it is their citizens – their electorate – who are the biggest losers. They need to fix the system and penalise banks and any others who facilitate tax dodging.

Ahead of the Irish general election in March, an Oxfam Ireland survey conducted nationwide found that 82% of people agreed that measures to specifically address tax dodging needed to be a priority for the incoming government and Taoiseach. The survey also showed growing concern in relation to large-scale tax dodging with 86% of Irish people believing that big companies and wealthy individuals are using tax loopholes to dodge paying their fair share of taxes.

The global tax system clearly does not serve the citizens of the world and this must change. Real transparency is needed – for example, establishing public registers of the beneficial owners of all companies, foundations and trusts (so governments know who really owns and benefits from them and can tax them accordingly).

We also need to know where companies really make their profits and where they are paying their taxes. This would allow countries to fairly tax multinationals where their profits are. To achieve this, a simple solution is on the table.

Country-by-country reporting, as it is called in tax jargon, would require multinational companies to publish exactly this information. Some countries including Ireland have said they will implement it but this information won’t be made public. This is a crucial flaw – because if the information remains confidential between tax authorities, the public and civil society won’t be able to hold multinationals to account for their tax practices – and developing countries won’t be able to scrutinise the global tax arrangements of multinationals operating in their territory.

As political leaders in Ireland continue to engage in discussions on government formation, the measures Ireland can take to assist in the reform of the global tax system should be part of the agreement of any progressive Programme for Government.

As voters in the Republic of Ireland prepare to go to the polls on Friday February 26th, a new survey by Oxfam Ireland has found that 8 out of 10 (81%) people want politicians to make inequality a key issue in the general election.

82% agree that the next Taoiseach should prioritise tackling inequality in the new programme for government, specifically addressing tax dodging, equal pay and access to healthcare.

This widespread opinion stems from the broader concern that Ireland is becoming a more unequal place – the survey revealed almost 8 out 10 (79%) of Irish people believe the gap between the richest and the rest of society is widening.

The Empathy Research nationwide survey was launched today at the Make Equality #1 pre-election event hosted by Oxfam Ireland and the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) and was chaired by economist David McWilliams with general election candidates Lorraine Clifford-Lee (Fianna Fáil), Carol Hunt (Independent Alliance), John Lyons (Labour), Eoin Ó Broin (Sinn Féin) and Bríd Smith (Anti-Austerity Alliance–People Before Profit) debating economic and gender inequality.

Oxfam Ireland Chief Executive Jim Clarken says: “This survey confirms that rising inequality is clearly at the forefront of Irish people’s minds as they prepare to go the polls. We live in a world where the richest 1% own more wealth than everyone else put together. Ordinary working families are up against odds that are impossible to beat and poorer people are paying the biggest price for rapidly increasing inequality.

“Every day Oxfam works to close the inequality gap from the bottom up by helping people to lift themselves out of poverty. Today, along with the people of Ireland, we demand more action in closing the gap from the top down too, tackling a toxic tax system, ensuring quality services for all and closing the gender pay gap.

“Inequality is not inevitable – it is the result of policy choices. The upcoming general election offers an important opportunity to shape a recovery that includes everyone.”

Director of National Women’s Council of Ireland Orla O'Connor says: “NWCI are calling on the next Government to prioritise equality budgeting and serious investment in public services. Tackling violence against women, delivery of quality health and maternity services, and providing a universal pension are all essential for women’s equality and all dependent on the resources being invested. There is a real danger that parties which focus on short-term tax cuts will not be in a position to deliver that investment.

“Equal pay is a major concern highlighted in the survey and in Ireland the gender pay gap has actually risen. A majority of those on low pay or insecure part-time contracts are women with 50% now earning €20,000 or less. This negative spiral must be halted and reversed. Whichever parties form the next Government they must legislate against precarious work, support a living wage and attach strong employment, equality and environmental standards to public spending while also promoting gender balance in senior roles.”

84% of Irish adults believe that women in Ireland being paid over 14% less than men is unfair – with women stronger in this belief than men (92% vs. 74%).

The NWCI is calling for an end to the gender pay gap to be named as a goal within the new programme for government.

The survey also shows growing concern about large-scale tax dodging with more than 8 out of 10 (86%) of Irish people believing that big companies and wealthy individuals are using tax loopholes to dodge paying their fair share of taxes. 83% agreed that tax dodging means vital public services like schools and hospitals in Ireland and across the world are suffering.